英语听书《白鲸记》第408期（在线收听） |
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. 因此,让我在这里恳切地劝告你们这些南塔开特的船主吧!在你们这种始终需要留神的捕鱼业中,可千万不要招收那些浅眉凹眼,爱做不合时宜的遐思的小伙子;这些家伙,他们是带一个飞东的,而不是鲍狄契的脑袋到船上来的。 Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. 我说,应该提防这样一种人;你的鲸一定要看得真切才能动手捕杀;可是,这种窝孔眼的柏拉图派的小伙子,却会教你绕了世界十圈,而使你永远捞不到二十英两较好的鲸油。
Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. 这种忠告并不是完全多余的。
For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. 因为,在目前,捕鲸业就好象是为许多罗曼蒂克,有忧郁症的和心不在焉的年轻人而设的避难所一般,他们不屑做尘世琐事,却到柏油和鲸脂中来寻找情趣。
Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates: 恰尔德哈罗尔德就经常栖息在一种倒运绝望的捕鲸船的桅顶上,用郁郁不乐的词句不由自主地叫喊:
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain." 滚滚向前吧,你深不可测的靛青色的海洋!千万艘捕鲸船徒劳地在你身上驰驱。
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; 但是,这些船只的船长却往往一边雇用这些心不在焉的年青哲学家,一边又在责备他们对航程没有充分的"兴趣";
half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. 隐隐约约地说他们是如此不堪救药,丧尽光荣大志,因为在他们那隐秘的灵魂中实在是很不愿意看到大鲸的。
But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home. 不过,这一切都是徒劳的;这些年轻的柏拉图派,总自认为自己的视觉有缺点;自己是近视眼;那么,过份使用这视神经又有什么用呢?他们已经把他们那只看戏用的望远镜给忘在家里了。 |
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